The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015: Takaaki Kajita And Arthur B. McDonald

Re:The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015: Takaaki Kajita And Arthu... by adekok on Tuesday October 06, 2015 @10:34AM (#10339123)

I worked on SNO for my masters, helping to build the water purification systems. The goal was one atom of impurity per cubic metre of water. It made distilled water look filthy. :)

Everyone knew that if we got it to work, Arthur would win the Nobel Prize. He worked very hard on it, and was a good leader.

Congratulations to him.

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Re:The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015: Takaaki Kajita And Arthu... by dgemm on Tuesday October 06, 2015 @11:46AM (#10339652)

I was a summer student at SNO circa 2006 and Art McDonald was always the nicest and most patient person you could imagine. Congratulations to him and the whole team that worked on this for many years.

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Re:The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015: Takaaki Kajita And Arthu... by powertower on Tuesday October 06, 2015 @03:19PM (#10341586)

http://physics.carleton.ca/sno/about-sno-project/sno-water-s...

Can't seem to find any info on the actual process of achieving this level of purification.

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Re:The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015: Takaaki Kajita And Arthu... by apetresc on Tuesday October 06, 2015 @11:48AM (#10339675)

Maybe I'm confused, but it seems like he won the prize for completely unrelated work. Does the prize committee award it for the full lifetime work and simply pick one nominal project to credit, or has Arthur McDonald simply done two Nobel-worthy projects in his lifetime?

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Re:The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015: Takaaki Kajita And Arthu... by adekok on Tuesday October 06, 2015 @12:07PM (#10339886)

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/201...

"for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass”

Which indicates that he won it for work resulting from the SNO experiment.

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Re:The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015: Takaaki Kajita And Arthu... by apetresc on Tuesday October 06, 2015 @02:22PM (#10341113)

Wait, so the water purification project led to the discovery that neutrinos have mass?

EDIT: Oh okay, I get it now. The project wasn't about building water purification systems, they just needed really really pure water to run particle-related experiments. Got it!

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